SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND
IN HISTORY
"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"

Rifleman F R GOODALL.

C/12031, 12th Bn., King's Royal Rifle Corps.

who died, aged 27, on the 23rd of August 1917


Etaples Military Cemetery. 27k S of Boulogne.

Name appears on Skelton War Memorial, Church Plaque and Skelton Parish Magazine list of 1914.
Whether name is Goodall or Goodhall is not clear.
Parish Magazine gives address as 17 High St, Skelton and CWGC website gives "Son of Dick and Elizabeth Goodall, of Mirfield, Yorks."
Both agree on Regiment and date of death.

The 12th (Service) Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps was formed in Winchester on September 21st 1914 and was attached to 60th Brigade, 20th (Light) Division.
The Division were fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres, Passchendaele, during the period prior to Rifleman Goodall's death.
It appears he was wounded and taken back to a base hospital at Etaples.
During the First World War, the area around Etaples was the scene of immense concentrations of Commonwealth reinforcement camps and hospitals.
It was remote from attack, except from aircraft, and accessible by railway from both the northern or the southern battlefields.
In 1917, 100,000 troops were camped among the sand dunes and the hospitals, which included eleven general, one stationary, four Red Cross hospitals and a convalescent depot, could deal with 22,000 wounded or sick.
Etaples, the largest Commission cemetery in France, contains 10,769 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, the earliest dating from May 1915.
After the war, a number of graves were brought into the cemetery from other French burial grounds.
Go back to previous page.